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Our Summary of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Dolores Haze is a twelve year old girl obsessed with the American pop culture of her time. Her mother, Charlotte, is a widow who runs a boarding house to support the two of them. When Humbert Humbert becomes one of their boarders, neither immediately suspect him of an unhealthy interest in young girls. Humbert is very interested in Dolores, whom he nicknames Lolita. He marries Charlotte to be able to maintain contact with Dolores. When Charlotte discovers his dark secret, she flees the house. Dolores is away at the time. Charlotte is killed in her haste to get away from Humbert, leaving him to raise Dolores by himself. Vladimir Nabokov writes Lolita about an incestuous relationship between stepfather and stepdaughter.

Top Quotes from Lolita

“There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: "honey-colored skin," "thin arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth"); ... ”More

“For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.”

“I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”